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Dreamworks’ “Home” Fails To Impress

BY ANASTASIA MONTAVON

“Home” Falls Short In Just About Every Way

Dreamworks’ latest animated film hit theaters on March 27. The movie, “Home,” stars Rihanna as Tip, a 15-year-old searching for her mom after the alien Boovs invade Earth. Jim Parsons voices Oh, a Boov that just doesn’t fit in with the rest of his society. By accident, Oh gives away the location of the Boovs and becomes a fugitive. He runs into Tip and agrees to help her find her mom in order to escape the Boovs searching for him.

The plot for this movie is rather unimaginative and full of holes. For starters, it opens with the most casual alien invasion I have ever seen. Then, there’s an undetermined time gap between the Boovs invading Earth and Tip finally being forced to go out and search for her mom. The movie implies it to be two hours, two weeks…possibly even years. It’s almost like the movie itself has no idea how much time has passed. The rest of the plot is predictable for anyone over the age of ten. Even then, kids who have seen their share of movies can probably determine what’s going to happen. There are also plenty of things that seem to happen in the movie “because the script called for it” or to get a cheap joke out of it.

The voice acting in this movie is also below par. Steve Martin plays the part of Captain Smek, and he’s probably the best performance in the movie. That’s not saying much, considering that his performance was average at best. Parsons performed exactly as you would expect and Rihanna was simply not a good fit for the character. There are some times where, for a brief moment, she seems to fit, but most of the time she sounds too old, ruining the immersion at times.

No matter how much I’ve tried, I can’t get over the music in this movie…and not in a good way. There are moments in what appear to be critical points in the plot where the song playing is just wrong. It doesn’t fit the mood, doesn’t add anything and takes away from the message the movie is supposed to be sending. Dubstep during an emotional battle? Doesn’t quite work. Several of Rihanna’s songs are used throughout the movie as well, and while one or two might be understandable, this movie seems to really want the viewer to remember that Rihanna was in this film. Overall, the music either worked adequately or didn’t work at all.

On the bright side, this film does put in the effort to represent many cultures. Tip and her mom are immigrants from Barbados. When the movie shows the location where all the people of the world have been sent, there are more than just white people and two or three people of color. The movie also tries to deal with some deeper ideas, like imperialism, although admittedly there was room to do a lot more. The humor wasn’t too terrible either, although there are a few jokes that are repeated to death.

There are many who have been looking forward to Dreamworks’ latest release, and I’m afraid to say this movie will probably be a disappointment to many fans. For children, this is most likely an entertaining movie. However, for people who just want to see it out of curiosity…this movie is probably worth passing on.